Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

Thank you for great year of learning and growing.

We appreciate your interest and passion and look forward to even bigger things in the coming year.

Be sure to check our our newest tutorials: http://appsamuck.com/.

Thanks to feedback and suggestions from readers like you, we now have created a single zip file that you can download that contains all of the source code from our series 31 Days of iPhone SDK Apps.

31 Days of iPhone SDK Apps Master Zip File.

And here is the full list of 31 Days of iPhone SDK Apps.

[http://www.excbadaccess.com]

Question of the Day #1: What iPhone dev site do you find most useful?

Question of the Day #2: What are some good resources for iPhone development?

Question of the Day #3: Is there a way I can record my iPhone screen as a video?

Question of the Day #4: Any recommendations for a great iPhone programming book?

You can find the answers to these questions and many more on our Question and Answer site: http://www.excbadaccess.com

Even better that is where you can find the answers to your questions. See you there!

Do you have iPhone SDK programming questions?

Do you have a hard time finding answers to your tough iPhone development problems?

Are you tired of searching and searching for how to create iPhone applications?

Do you wish there was site dedicated to answering your iPhone SDK programming questions?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then you should check out http://www.excbadaccess.com/.

Question:

How do I disable the idle timer?

Answer:

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setIdleTimerDisabled:YES];

Question:

How do I hide/show the status bar?

Answer:

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES animated:NO]];

[See told you we had some surprises in store for you.]

We’ve gotten a LOT of requests to do some really in depth step-by-step tutorials on how to write iPhone SDK applications from scratch. We have published a ton of source code already, and there will be more to come. And soon we will be expanding the descriptions, and explanations for the applications we have already written.

But we want to do more, so we have decided to really push ourselves, and try to get an ebook out this month, “Step by Step: How to Write Your First iPhone SDK Application”. If all goes well, this will be the first in a series of iPhone SDK ebooks.

While the book will target begginers, it will still include some of our best tips and tricks, that we have picked up along the way, that make writing iPhone SDK applications a lot easier. The ebook will be different from most ebooks, because we want it to be a living book, that is updated as we receive new feedback from readers over time.

We also believe in our readers, and the marketplace. So instead of charging $49, or $39, or $29 for our ebook. We will charge no more than $9. And we intend to charge even less, with an introductory offer of $0.99 USD for all of our loyal Apps Amuck readers.

Right now, we are trying to put the infrastructure in place to make all of this happen. But if you can not wait until then, and want to be one of the first to recieve the “Step by Step: How to Write Your First iPhone SDK Application” ebook, then send an email to [email protected] with the subject “StepByStep99″, and we will add your name to the list!

On Wednesday, October 01, 2008 Apple remove the iPhone SDK NDA, and Apps Amuck was there. On the same day we started our 31 days of iPhone SDK applications. Since then we have released all 31 iPhone SDK applications, as promised.

We have heard from many of you, that you want more. And that is our goal, to give you more, and more. We want to help you be great. And it is a goal we are excited about, and looking forward to achieving. Every time we hear from one of our readers, how we helped them achieve and do more, we know we are making a big difference.

We were able to release all 31 of our iPhone SDK applications. This was quite the challenge for us, and we feel we could do even better. That’s why for the 30 days of November, we will be going back and “refactoring”, and improving our existing 31 iPhone SDK applications.

What does this mean for you? More detailed descriptions, and more in depth explanations for all the applications we have already published.

[PS: Don’t you worry. We still have a few more surprises for you up our sleeves. The sky is the limit for all of us.]

If you’ve used Cocos2D for awhile you may have had some difficult when trying to handle the display order of images.

Things get even more complicated if you are creating an isometric game.  The player character may need to be placed behind an obstacle such as a rock or a tree.  In v0.99.1 automatic z-ordering for tile maps was implemented, and the problem was somewhat solved, but some problems still exist and there is some tweaking to be done.

Another problem, especially with map-based games is creating a player HUD display as the images need to be placed at the right z-ordering and at a consistent location on the screen.

Nat Weiss has created a tutorial on how to overcome these problems by creating two different custom sprite classes which can be found here:
CCZSprite and HudLevelSprite

These two classes should be of help to anyone interested in creating a map-based game in Cocos2D.

Thanks for reading, if you like this please share it!

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

.

Share and Enjoy:

So far iAds have provided a very high CPM rate although some have complained about the fill rates.  Recently Apple announced their iAds for developers program.

Here’s some of the more interesting info about it:

• The cost is 0.25 cents per click, radically lower than the high cost per click paid for brand advertising.
• One developer stated they had a conversion rate of 20%
• Competitors apps can be excluded
• You can’t choose to display specific ads in your app

Overall with the conversion rate and pricing it looks like things are looking extremely good for the new iAds for developers feature.

If you liked this info, please share it!

[Source: Business Insider]

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

.

Share and Enjoy:

Laying out levels can be a pain, in fact it can be downright impossible if you don’t have some sort of editor.

I caught this very simple guide on to how to do this using Visio which is very interesting as it is a tool that so many people have.

Here’s the process in a nutshell, export the Visio document convert it to an .xsl file then convert that into a .plist file using a specific XML template and read the contents in using multiple NSDictionary’s.

I’m making the process sound simplistic, but there really isn’t much more to it than that, you will of course need to do your own coding to make sure your game knows how to handle the extracted data

You can find more info about this process along with the tools used over at Funky Visions:
Using Visio To Write iPhone Apps. Seriously?

If you liked this, please share it!

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

.

Share and Enjoy:

Hosting a beta test for an iPhone or iPad app is often a bit much.  The time spent conducting such a test can be extremely costly.

If you are creating a more advanced app though it can be a necessity, and there are many things you will need to do such as: finding beta testers, sending out ad-hoc builds, guiding people through the install process, and filtering through the different responses.

Ray Wenderlich has written a great article that explores all of these facets and more in detail which you can find here:
How To Host A Beta Test For Your iOS App

Thanks for reading, if you lik this please share it!

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

.

Share and Enjoy: